5/13/2010 @ 12:00PM

Home Alone In The Age Of Suburban Anxiety

Last month, as my 8-year-old daughter lay vaguely sick and reading in bed, I did something I’d never done before: After failing to find a neighbor who could cover for me, I left her completely alone while I ferried her little brother to kindergarten.

Child’s time alone: 10 minutes.

Worry factor: more than warranted.

Result: child happily ensconced in the world of Harry Potter when I returned, instead of grumpy about tagging along for the drop-off, sick and in pajamas.

And luckily, as I discovered after the fact, it was completely legal: Although some safety groups recommend that kids under age 12 should never be left alone, my state, Maryland, specifically allows children as young as 8 to remain home unsupervised.

I never thought I’d find it so hard to leave my children home alone. After all, I had a very independent childhood. I was a latchkey kid by age 7. I was also allowed the run of the block in the company of the neighborhood kids, as long as we didn’t turn a corner. By age 9 I was allowed to ride the public bus to school.

By fall of fifth grade, my mother let me walk the mile to school. My best friend and I extrapolated this freedom by spending hours literally trying to get lost on the way home (in San Francisco’s Crocker-Amazon neighborhood, the same year and place where Patty Hearst was arrested after her year of armed bank robbery alongside the Symbionese Liberation Army).

During high school I worked a few summers in a store in San Francisco’s seedy Tenderloin district. By senior year half of my classes were independent study, which left me most of the day to cycle, bus and eventually drive my own car all over the city, often past midnight, rarely with my mother’s blessing.

My mom wasn’t actually trying to raise me to be independent. She just couldn’t afford childcare. In fact, even though she allowed me to walk to school in second grade, she didn’t teach me to cross the street because she was sure I’d be hit by a car. I had to learn from a crossing guard.

The whole time I was learning to be independent, I was amazed by my mother’s paranoia. And now–cue laughter–it’s my turn. I have no idea how this happened, but now that I’m a mother I struggle daily with the urge to keep my kids hermetically sealed in our suburban home.

My own childhood independence led me to spend two amazing years bicycling around the world as an adult, on dangerous highways like the ones filled with hurtling buses, leaning ox-carts and scythe-swinging farmers in Java. Yet now, I have a hard time imagining my kids riding their bikes the few suburban blocks to school, unless I’m alongside.

In my defense, I have my reasons.

Yes, we live in suburbia, but we’ve had our share of troubles: a child molester who moved in two doors away (and later moved out, thankfully); a drunken young man who tried to break down a neighbor’s door as the neighbor cowered with her baby in the basement; a non-responsive, blood- and mulch-covered body that turned up on our doorstep one morning (he turned out to be an extremely drunk painter who’d been working on the house next door); a teen across the street who was arrested for several armed robberies; and gunfire that blew out the windows, but thankfully harmed no one, in a house half a block away.

That’s not quite as threatening as sharing a neighborhood with the Symbionese Liberation Army. Or as the day that I found out, at the age of 7, that a murder-suicide had taken place the night before in the other half of our rented duplex.

Still, given our current neighborhood’s quirks, I’m in no hurry to set my kids loose on these streets. I’m sure I’d reconsider if we lived elsewhere, say, on a street that hasn’t had gunfire.

In the meantime, we’ll work slowly toward independence. Maybe next year I’ll consider leaving my daughter home alone for a whole 30 minutes.

Laugh, but note: I did teach each of my kids to cross the street at the age of 5. It backfired. Instead of learning independence, they felt like I was pushing them into growing up and started clinging to me all the more, especially at intersections, until quite recently.

Which makes me think that maybe the best way to raise independent kids is to keep them bottled up until adulthood. I know that’s not true, but sometimes I wish it were.

Over to you, readers: What’s the best age to leave your kids home alone?